


Far Off Places

by Heart_Seoul_Soshi



Category: Descendants (Disney Movies)
Genre: F/F, avid reader Evie hmu
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-15 21:58:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13040268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heart_Seoul_Soshi/pseuds/Heart_Seoul_Soshi
Summary: A short drabble in which Mal finds out what's been keeping Evie from her beauty sleep for weeks





	Far Off Places

**Author's Note:**

> a request from @atinygaykira on tumblr

Dark circles under Evie’s eyes were cause for blaring alarm in Mal’s head. She covered them perfectly, of course, but first thing in the morning they were right there, setting off Mal’s mental warning sirens. She said nothing the very first day she noticed them, or the second, or the third, but when a week passed, and Mal caught her best friend stumbling into the desk one morning with heavy, half-closed eyes, she had to speak up.  
  
“Evie, what’s going on??” she demanded, dropping the shirt she picked out on her bed to go over to her.  
  
“…Hm? What?” Evie rubbed her eyes.  
  
“You haven’t been sleeping at night,” Mal flatly said, looking seriously into Evie’s cloudy gaze. “What is it? Are you having nightmares?”  
  
“Mal, no,” Evie laughed her off and moved past her to the dresser, to decide on an outfit of her own before she went into the bathroom to start on her makeup. “I’m okay.”  
  
Mal kept pushing it, far too familiar with sleepless nights and hating the thought of Evie suffering through them alone more than she cared to admit. But Evie insisted, she was absolutely fine. It went on that way for a few days more, Mal tentatively debating on whether or not she wanted to hang Evie upside down from the second floor banister until she talked, determined to help her friend with her slightly skewed morals yet ultimately good intentions.  
  
But Mal blinked her eyes open one night, or technically, one very early morning, and the glow of lamplight from across the room stung her eyes. With a groan she rolled over to bury her face in her pillow until she decided she was awake and conscious enough to deal with this. Another groan followed when she finally sat up, body feeling like it was tied down with weights.  
  
“…E?”  
  
She was still blinking in the light, but that was definitely Evie propped up in bed at—Mal glanced at her alarm clock—4:59 in the morning.  
  
At the sound of Mal’s groggy voice Evie jumped a bit, not realizing she had woken up. She slipped a bookmark in between the pages of the book she was holding, which is what first brought Mal’s attention to it.  
  
“…What are you doing?” Mal frowned, throwing the covers off.  
  
She got out of bed and shuffled across the room just as Evie shut the book closed, and Mal’s blurry vision cleared to have a look at it. It was a plain, sky blue hardcover with a blank front, but “The Snow Queen” debossed on the spine. Mal was awake enough now to put it together.  
  
“You’ve been up late reading all this time?”  
  
Evie didn’t know why there was such a hint of astonishment lying within Mal’s tone.  
  
“Well, yeah,” Evie laughed a bit.  
  
Mal climbed up beside Evie on her bed.  
  
“E, it’s five in the morning. We have class in  _hours_. Why would you stay awake this late just to read? You’ve got dark circles under your eyes that would make your mother toss and turn in her sleep and this morning you confused Dude for a shag pillow, you have to actually go to bed at night.”  
  
“M, I can’t help it,” Evie smiled in spite of a yawn.  
  
Mal just looked worriedly at her, her expression taking on that endearing bunched up pout of hers. Evie saw the look, and responded with a thoughtful one, trying to figure out how to explain.  
  
“…Mal, we grew up on The Isle. And me? I grew up locked inside a castle. For ten years all I ever saw were stone walls, and when I was finally out, all I saw after that was a crumbling, grungy island stuck behind a barrier. I’ve been trapped all my life, you know? Even more so than you, or Carlos, or Jay.”  
  
Mal frowned, knowing that her own mother was responsible for that dark cloud in Evie’s life.  
  
“When I read…I’m not here anymore. I’m in far-off places with daring swordfights and magic spells. I don’t remember the castle, or the island, I’m too busy getting lost in a whole other world, a  _better_ world. And we didn’t have books on The Isle, not the way they do here in Auradon. Books you can read through to the end without pages missing or torn, without the whole thing falling apart in your hands after coming from being soaked in seawater. I’ve been reading so much lately because it helps me forget, Mal.”  
  
“…Forget?” Mal prodded.  
  
“Who I… _what_ I came from.”  
  
Evie ran her thumb back and forth across the book’s cover, avoiding Mal’s eyes just then.  
  
“I never thought about how…I mean, I knew you…” Mal struggled to find words that made sense.  
  
“It’s okay,” Evie assured her.  "It just helps, that’s all.  I guess I stay up so late because I get so amazingly lost.“  
  
“Better in there than it is out here, huh?”  
  
“I didn’t mean it like that.”  
  
Mal looked thoughtful, if not a little saddened. This was essentially what she’d been concerned about the first time around with Evie’s sleepless nights. Nothing wrong with her enjoying her books and her adventures, but the underlying reason for it gave Mal pause.  
  
Unceremoniously, she invited herself right in and made herself comfortable under Evie’s covers, snuggling up warmly beneath the sheets.  
  
“Read me something,” she requested, scooting over onto Evie’s pillow.  
  
“Really?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
Evie’s smile was beaming as she opened her book right back to where she’d left off, starting to read aloud from The Snow Queen with that wonderfully tantalizing voice of hers, somehow both enticing and soothing Mal at the same time.  
  
_“It was one of those bits of the looking-glass—that magic mirror, of which we have spoken—the ugly glass which made everything great and good appear small and ugly, while all that was wicked and bad became more visible, and every little fault could be plainly seen. Poor little Kay had also received a small grain in his heart, which very quickly turned to a lump of ice. He felt no more pain, but the glass was there still.”_  
  
Even Mal could feel that striking a little too close to home for Evie, even before she felt it in the rather long and deep pause that hung in the air when Evie realized what she’d read. Without a word she leaned over, resting her head on Evie’s shoulder and looking down at the open pages.  
  
“Can I see?” she asked.  
  
Evie handed the book over to her, and Mal started leisurely flipping through it, scanning the passages.  
  
“Here’s a part that I like,” Mal said, before reading aloud herself. “ _In this kingdom where we now are, there lives a princess, who is so wonderfully clever that she has read all the newspapers in the world, and forgotten them too, although she is so clever._ ”  
  
Evie thought her cheeks felt suspiciously warm.  
  
“You like that part?” she questioned.  
  
“I like that part,” Mal nodded, turning some more pages. “…And this one, too.  _But Gerda and Kay went hand-in-hand towards home; and as they advanced, spring appeared more lovely with its green verdure and it’s beautiful flowers. The roses out on the roof were in full bloom, and peeped in at the window; and there stood the little chairs, on which they had sat when children. Kay and Gerda seated themselves each on their own chair, and held each other by the hand, while the cold empty grandeur of the Snow Queen’s palace vanished from their memories like a painful dream._ ”  
  
Evie laid her head on top of Mal’s, eyes growing heavy, fighting them open just long enough to take over and read the last sentence on the last page.  
  
_“And Kay and Gerda looked into each other’s eyes, and they both sat there, grown up, yet children at heart; and it was summer—warm, beautiful summer.”_  
  
Evie gave in then, letting her eyes fall shut and the pull of sleep take her over completely, speaking her next words through blissfully murmured lips.  
  
“…Yeah, Mal.  I like that part too.” 


End file.
